As the Miller was beginning to fume because Friedrich did not come, his wife said: "Father, never mind him; you are tired and wearied with the jolting of the waggon--come to bed; Fieka shall warm a little beer for you to drive out the night air." "Mother," he answered, "you're right as usual, I am dreadfully tired, for money business is so wearying. Well, it's in order now--as good as in order at least--for the Herr Amtshauptmann said: 'Miller Voss, I shall not forget you.' I must be in again at Stemhagen early to-morrow morning." So saying, he went to bed, and was asleep and snoring in five minutes. Mother and daughter sat up a while longer, Fieka lost in thought and knitting away rapidly. "Fieka, you are industrious," said her mother at last; "and I don't fold my hands and lay them in my lap either; and Father has worked and done what he could all his life. But what is the use of it all? The bad times come and what the French have left, the Jews and lawyers take; the day after to-morrow we must pay Itzig five hundred thalers, and we haven't a shilling." "But Father speaks as if it were all right now?" "Don't trust what he says this evening; a red sky in the morning and a red sky in the evening are very different things; but he was right about one thing this evening; if you had only accepted the Malchin Merchant!" "Mother dear," said Fieka and laid her hand gently in her mother's and looked up into her face, "He was not the right one." "Few people are able to marry exactly as they would like now-a-days, daughter; there is always something. The Merchant is well off and if your father and I knew that you were well provided for, it would take a great stone off our hearts." "Mother, dear mother, don't talk so. Would you have me leave you when you're in trouble, and in a dishonest way?" "Dishonest, Fieka?" "Yes, dishonest, mother," she answered, "for when the Merchant sought me, he thought we were rich, and therefore he wished to have me, but I would not deceive him. I knew we were poor, for though you and father in your goodness have tried to keep it from me that we had lost our money, I have seen it for a long while. Now, pretty nearly every one knows it, so if any one comes and wants to marry me, he will want me and not my money; and perhaps he will be the right one." Then she got up, and put her knitting things away and kissed her mother. "Good night," she said and went into her bedroom. The Miller's wife, after sitting thinking some time longer, sighed: "She's right, and we must trust in God, who orders all for the best."